Desperate times, desperate measures

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Alan Linda

The thing about the holidays is — they’re hard on everybody. Relatives coming and going, you have to keep them entertained (Lots of alcohol often serves as a more than an adequate source of Christmas cheer). The end result, well, that’s what we’re after. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Lots of people have to work during the holidays, especially the day before.

Those were the thoughts circling through two policemen’s brains when the call came in to go check out a distraught housewife in one of the better neighborhoods of this particular large city.

“Aw, heck,” said one of the patrolmen to the other, “let’s just blow this off.” He’s thinking that people often come up with some pretty weird stuff the day before a big national holiday. And it was close to quitting time.

“We could, sure,” likely said the partner, who wasn’t too convinced either that this was a righteous call, one where someone was being abused, or robbed, or violently attacked. After all, the dispatcher did say that it wasn’t an emergency, didn’t she? Her kid probably had his tongue stuck to the pump handle, or something. Well, there aren’t any pump handles around anymore, but the equivalent police emergency might be pretty comparable.

“Maybe we could refer it to the fire department,” said the first one. Sure, anonymously call it in from a pay phone somewhere, and get caught doing it. That’d be a good Christmas scene — getting fired.

So they went. Found the address in an upscale neighborhood. Looked at the very expensive house from the squad car. Wondered to one another why they were here. Shrugged, got out, went up, knocked on the door.

The most gorgeous woman dressed up to kill that they had ever, ever seen opened the door, and from that moment on, the invisible observer would have believed that this was the police emergency of the century. These guys in their blue uniforms and hardware belts puffed out into the natural role of the good guys, and you’d have thought they were ten feet tall, the way they strutted.

“There’s a noise up in the attic,” said the woman, who was obviously upset, and obviously glad the city’s finest were there, that they were men, and that they were 10 feet tall. “I don’t know who to call.”

The two policemen could hardly speak. She needs us. She started up the stairs.

They followed that woman smoothly moving inside her short skirt up those stairs. They were silent. Speechless. She was just so beautiful, and petite, and she needed two strong men, and they were two strong men.

They all paused beneath the access to the attic, where she had positioned a step ladder. She said: “I just, you know, couldn’t bring myself to look up there.”

Indeed, the scrabbling noises coming from the other side of that hatch access were impressive.

There was a slight moment of uncomfortable male competition as they both tried to climb the step ladder at once, but Officer Friendly, we’ll call him, won that short little battle, grabbed the hatch opening, swung it down, and instantly found himself with a face full of hopping mad squirrel. He swiped it off with one hand. It flew over to the stairs, and ran down around the corner into the rest of the house, the officers in hot pursuit.

The big vase on an end table went first, then all the stuff on the fireplace mantle, in the mad chase to grab the squirrel. After that, it was brooms and shrieking and calls of “I got’im” and racing through the room and more stuff knocked over and no simple little squirrel call was going to make them the laughing stock of the precinct no sir they’d get him.

Just then, the squirrel ran around the corner of the fireplace, ducked into it (There was a fire going, very Christmasy.) and set his tail on fire. Hot on his tail (sorry, couldn’t resist that one), they pressured the squirrel into the wood box, where there were some old dried up flowers which went up into flames like gasoline. The squirrel came out, tail still burning, and ran under the couch. Officer Friendly’s partner came up instantly with a fire extinguisher (well, he already had it, thinking he could render the animal incapacitated with it, like a dusty taser, sort of.).

Put out the fire in the wood box. Point it under the couch, which was smoking, blow the squirrel out the other side, where Officer Friendly sprayed it with pepper spray. Probably not a good idea. The squirrel went hyper, and climbed the drapes, leaving a trail of soot and fire extinguisher up one and down the other.

It finally had a heart attack and died. Feet in the air. Pesky little devil.

Huh? Isn’t this a great story to have to face up to? Happy holidays to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.